Daughter of the Reef Read Free

lift the head, breathe, relax, and sink under. Kick, lift, breathe, relax. No. To relax was impossible now.  
    Rain pattered down, a rain colder than the sea. She thought about the fate of the doomed. As a noblewoman it was her right to enter the paradise of Paparangi and dwell with the other favored souls. But what if the gods had found her impious? They might send her to the place of darkness and suffering instead. No, that was not possible, she told herself. She, who had served as ceremonial maiden-to-the-gods, would surely be accepted in Paparangi. Thinking so, she lost her will to keep struggling.  
    When the sea lifted her, she rarely bothered to open her eyes. The coming paradise seemed to surround her. Yet once in a while, as she rose to the surface, she noticed the water growing calmer. She saw clouds starting to disperse, the sky brightening. And something unexpected—long and dark—was bobbing on the swells. A canoe ?  
    Hastily she spoke a prayer to her guardian spirit, and then she began to swim. She lost sight of her target, halted in panic, turned to scan the waves. “Tapahi-roro-ariki,” she called again. Still she saw nothing but churning water.  
    Then suddenly, a short way off, she spotted what appeared to be a drifting wreck. She threw herself after it. Her hand reached out and she felt something solid.  
    She clawed at the wood, dug in with her nails as this new hope revived her. She pulled the wet hair from her eyes and tipped her head back to get a better view of what she had found. The single-hull craft was empty. Capsized. She flung one arm over the upturned bottom, tried to heave herself atop it. The craft only rocked, dumping her back in the sea. Frantically she grabbed on again and clung with both hands, determined not to let the wreck get away.  
    When she had caught her breath, she inspected the boat, moving hand over hand along its side. She found no obvious damage to the single hull, which was made of small planks sewn tightly together. The long outrigger float, attached by flexible poles, also appeared sound. If she could right the craft and bail it, Tepua thought, she might survive. If a paddle remained lashed inside, she would have some hope of reaching land.  
    But how to turn the boat over? Watching from shore, she had seen vessels capsized by sudden winds. What the boatmen often did was stand on the outrigger of an overturned canoe, shoving it down and under. Then, once the craft righted, they would rock it violently, slopping enough water out so that they could climb in and bail.  
    Tepua had never done this, but saw how it might work. Balancing on the outrigger, she curled up with her knees beneath her chest. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her legs. The outrigger went down, but it came right back up again, pitching her off. The second time, her feet slipped off too soon. The outrigger surged up, smacking her on the rump. She rubbed the bruise and kept trying.  
    The rain had stopped. An edge of sun peeked from behind the clouds. But the canoe remained upside down. She began to think that the canoe was just too big for her to right by herself, the outrigger too buoyant to go under. She thought about breaking or cutting the outrigger loose, but she had no knife, and she doubted that the water-filled hull would float without its outrigger.  
    With anger fueling her effort, she made one more try, kicking down as hard as she could to sink the outrigger. She went down with it, gave it one more shove with the soles of her feet, then surfaced, gasping. She was sure she had lost once again when she saw the water frothing and the hull still spinning. Then the outrigger shot up on the side away from her. The canoe wallowed in the swells, its bare, wet mast pointed at the sky!  
    Crying and laughing at the same time, Tepua laid her arms over the sunken splashboard. She looked within the flooded hull to see if any supplies remained. A sack of